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Faculty

Dr. Christine L. Larson

Associate Professor, Department of Psychology

I investigate how people regulate their emotions, how cognition and affect interact in this process, and how regulation goes awry in anxiety, depression, and disinhibitory psychopathology. One major current focus of our work is to prsopectivlely predict posttraumatic stress using multilevel assessments of acute trauma survivors. We use multimodal neuroimaging, electrophysiological, behavioral, and molecular genetic techniques to address these questions.

Graduate Students

Ken Bennett

I am currently a third year student in the clinical psychology program. I am interested in the neural underpinnings and interplay of anxiety and emotion. Specifically, I am interested in the relationship between uncertainty, worry, and avoidance, and how it relates to the development and maintenance of anxiety. Currently, I am working on a project at the VA that is examining the effects of a computerized working memory training on anxiety-related symptoms in a veteran PTSD population. I am also involved in a project investigating how the response to uncertainty relates to the development of PTSD symptoms in a sample that was recently exposed to a traumatic event.

Kevin Haworth

I received my bachelor’s degree in psychology from the University of Northern Colorado. After college I spent 3 years as a researcher at the University of Washington. I am currently a fifth year student in the Clinical Psychology PhD program. My general research interest is examining the interplay between cognition and emotion. Specifically, I am interested in attention and working memory and how those processes are related to reward processing and rumination in depression.

Ashley Huggins

I am a second year in the clinical psychology doctoral program. Broadly, I am interested in the neural underpinnings of anxious and trauma-related psychopathology. I am currently working on a prospective PTSD study, where I am particularly interested in understanding how neural and behavioral processes indicative of fear dysregulation (such as overgeneralized fear) may predict chronic posttraumatic distress. I am also working on a pre-post neuroimaging study of a computer-based intervention for obsessive-compulsive related symptoms and a project examining the effects of uncertainty and negative affective distraction on working memory and visual attention.

Tara Miskovich

I am a fifth year student in the clinical psychology program. My primary interest is in how cognitive control processes interact with emotions. Currently, I am working on several projects, including investigations of proactive and reactive control in anxiety, a prospective investigation of acute post-trauma predictors of PTSD, a pre-post imaging study of a computer-based intervention for OCD, and a project assessing the extent to which distracting but rewarding information gain access into working memory. In addition, I am also investigating individual differences in cortical structure that are related to trait anxiety and disinhibitory psychopathology to elucidate possible early developmental abnormalities.

Walker Pedersen

I am a doctoral student in the experimental psychology program. I am interested in the neural underpinnings of emotion and social behavior. Although my interests are broad, my recent projects investigate the ways state anxiety affects how people accomplish cognitive tasks and respond to social and affective stimuli. I have investigated these topics using multiple methods, including 3T and 7T fMRI, ERP, GSR, EMG and genetics.

Post-Baccalaureate Research Assistants

Jessica Hanson

I am an Associate Research Specialist in the UWM Affective Neuroscience Laboratory. In the future I plan to pursue a career in clinical neuroscience research. I am currently serving as study coordinator for an NIH R01-funded project attempting to identify early post-trauma predictors of risk for PTSD and other disorders.